“See, the biggest part, what happened to me before, is the fact that I forgot why I was doing it. I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I was to the point where I was just going through the motions. I didn’t enjoy the process, because it’s all about the process. You’ve got to really dig deep and you’ve got to really love every single thing about the game.

“The grind, the grind is where it’s at. So I gotta fall in love with that grind again. And that grind is what brings that dog out. Because when I’m out there and I’m doing that extra work, when I’m hitting that bag and I’m making myself go until I can’t go no more, until I want to pass out because I’m so dizzy with exhaustion, when I do that, I know somebody has to pay for that. So when I’m on and when my mindset is going like that, on fight night it becomes easy, being I’ve been breeding that dog all through training camp. On fight night I get to let it out.”

Evans is starting to sound like Brandon Vera, another guy who keeps on claiming to be over the mehsies. Refalling in love with the grind at this point in Rashad’s career might be harder than refalling in love with a wife who gained 100 pounds after you married her. Rashad is rich and soft and a former UFC champion. He is also a man missing a higher purpose. Until Jon Jones smashes into an unmovable object (more likely at this point to be another pole than a UFC fighter), there’s not a lot he can do other than try to hold onto his top five position and make more benjamins.

Chael is throwing this pity Rashad’s way to try and show him there are exciting storylines and interesting career opportunities out there for him if he seeks them out, but that’s largely untrue. I doubt this Chael fight will stoke much interest and short of Evans starting to call people giant stacks of shit, he doesn’t have many interesting angles with the rest of the UFC roster. Unless he wants to call out Machida, but very few people are interested in fighting that guy for some reason.

Chael should have offered him a free course on marketing instead of a fight. Maybe that’s what he considers this match up to be. But any heat they try to generate leading up to this thing is going to seem pretty fake considering they just spent the last half a year as bantering buddies behind a sportsdesk.